A thought-provoking comment from Fr. Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary's in Greenville, SC about the fear that some Catholics manifest: If something is not clearly non-Protestant, it can't be true, unadulterated Catholicism.

"Some Christians think of the Reformation like a nasty divorce: You get the kids; I get the dogs. You get the house; I get the car. You get the Scriptures; we get the sacraments.

Once this mentality has taken hold in the Catholic imagination, reading the Bible is something the Protestants do and evangelical is an adjective that can modify only the noun Protestant.

But it is the Catholic Church which teaches us that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. And is the Catholic Church which offers the adjective evangelical as a way of applying the Gospel to every part of Christian life.

An Evangelical Catholic (as opposed to a cultural, cafeteria, or casual Catholic) is one who understands that Baptism makes every Catholic a herald of the Gospel with the duty and privilege of bearing witness to the Lord Jesus. For more than 25 years, John Paul the Great called the entire Church to the work he described as the New Evangelization.....announcing the timeless Gospel as though for the first time to a world that once received but then forgot the Word of God. Being an Evangelical Catholic is nothing other than accepting the work of the New Evangelization and doing our part to fultill the Great Commission.

Please do not allow false dichotomies to rob you of your own patrimony. Evangelical does not mean Protestant; it means of and for and by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. That is exciting stuff, and it is great to be an Evangelical Catholic."